On Monday, the federal judge in the case against the Dover, Pa., school board found that, from a legal standpoint, intelligent design (ID) is religion. He did not find that it is a false or inappropriate explanation of life, just that it is a religious explanation. This ruling has serious implications – too detailed for discussion here – for the recent actions of the Kansas Board of Education and for the prospects of the Kansas Bioscience Initiative. But before reactions to this legal ruling solidify along all-too-predictable lines, let’s declare a Christmas truce in the culture wars.

Armed with Judge Jones’ ruling, evolution supporters, including many people of faith, are celebrating and planning new legal and political initiatives. Sadly, they are again also lampooning creationists and failing to understand why anyone might not like “their” science. Meanwhile, intelligent design (ID) proponents are casting blame on various caricatures of liberals, secularists and scientific dogmatists, and are retreating into their familiar role as marginalized, persecuted, and misunderstood victims of legal and scientific “tyranny.” But both the evolutionists and “ID-ists” are missing the point.

Defeating ID is surely not the goal of evolutionary science, and neither is defeating good science the goal of the millions of Americans who “disbelieve” in evolution and have been wishfully attracted to ID. Evolutionists seek to advance our understanding of life and how living organisms work, with the hope of using that knowledge to improve human life through medicines and other “biotechnologies.”

Antievolutionists sincerely seek a purposeful and, for many, a biblically consistent, view of our special place in creation, restoring the kind of non-materialistic simplicity that many in both camps agree is lost in our secular lifestyles. All are searching for a creation story that accounts for spiritual values and incorporates scientific knowledge.

Whether one likes Judge Jones’ decision or not, it is hard to overlook the fact that the decisive testimony was actually that of the defendants’ most highly touted expert witness: Michael Behe, generally regarded as the most qualified scientist in the ID camp. The judge noted that Behe “claims that the plausibility of the argument for ID depends upon the extent to which one believes in the existence of God. As no evidence in the record indicates that any other scientific proposition’s validity rests on belief in God, nor is the Court aware of any such scientific propositions, Professor Behe’s assertion constitutes substantial evidence that in his view, as is commensurate with other prominent ID leaders, ID is a religious and not a scientific proposition.”

It will be difficult indeed for the intelligent design movement to recover from this setback to its desired status as a revolutionary scientific paradigm that crosses the boundary between the natural and supernatural. Behe and other witnesses for the defense also testified that ID has yet to spawn a single piece of empirical scientific research confirming any of its core precepts. Maybe someday they will come up with a way to scientifically investigate the nature of God. But that’s not the point!

So what if ID isn’t the kind of idea that can be researched and tested using any means or methods in the current toolbox of scientists. So what, indeed, if, despite (now embarrassing) assertions to the contrary, there is nothing for a teacher of “ID science” to teach. So what if the only biotechnology ID could lead would be applied prayer in a pharmaceutical lab.

ID is a highly meaningful religious idea. Judge Jones reviewed ID’s Christian heritage going back to Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. ID has great religious relevance today: intelligent design by means of evolution. Call it intelligent evolution (IE).

Right now is an excellent time to take a closer look at the body of knowledge called evolutionary science. And to reconsider whether the supposed conflict between the theory of evolution and creationism may truly be what the Judge called a “contrived dualism” (citing the 1982 case of Mclean vs. Arkansas) which unnecessarily deprives us of the opportunity to integrate good science with good theology. At this time of the year when God’s gift of merciful love is so abundantly celebrated, we can be grateful that true science helps us know our special place within the whole family of God’s creatures.

– John Lillard Burch, a bioscience investor, is a member of the Board of the Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center at Kansas University and a lay leader of adult Christian Education at Plymouth Congregational Church.